Monika Swasti Winarnita is a Postdoctoral Fellow of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, BC Canada with affiliation to La Trobe University Australia. Her published work covers Indonesian, Malay and Australian studies, migration, transnational families, diaspora politics, identity, gender, sexuality and cultural performance.

Migration makes a profound impression on identity (gender and sexuality, culture, class, status), its expressions, and performance. Research in this field has demonstrated that migrant communities often cast women as bearers of cultural reproduction. This is especially the case when women choose to become representatives of their community through cultural dance performances. Such performances are also a means to express the migrant life of movement and a way to maintain their sense of well-being. Dancing the Feminine is a compelling vision of expressions of gender and identity at the heart of the Asian women’s experience. For the Indonesian female migrants, performing ‘femininity’ is frequently negotiated in a cross-cultural context. The performances that author Monika Winarnita analyses are dramas of human interaction brought up through fissures and resolutions between the performers and their various audiences. The book provides analysis of these cultural performances as rituals of belonging, which demonstrate that in the diaspora meanings of the ritual are always open to being contested.

A particular appeal of this book is the way in which cultural dance performance offers profound insight into migrants’ life experience as well as into how human beings tell their stories and interact with one another. Based on her experience of performing dance with Indonesian migrant women in Australia, the author provides a unique and novel set of research data that contributes to a diverse body of scholarly work in migration, performance, gender, sexuality and cultural studies, anthropology, and Asian studies.

Hardback ISBN:

978-1-84519-693-6

Hardback Price:

£50.00 / $69.95

Release Date:

2013

Paperback ISBN:

978-1-84519-818-3

Paperback Price:

£29.95 / $39.95

Release Date:

2014

Page Extent / Format:

192 pp. / 229 x 152 mm

Illustrated:

No

Acknowledgements

Introducing Indonesian Migrant Women Performance
Methodology
Intersection of Literature: Marriage Migration and Migrants’
Cultural Performance
Perth, Western Australia: Fieldwork Location among the Migrant
Community
Research on Indonesian–Australians and their Intercultural
Relationships
Catcalling Older Dancers who are Performing a Feminine Dance
Ethnomusicology of Indonesians in Australia and Indonesian
Women Performers
Chapter Outline

Chapter One: Politics and Poetics
of Authenticity in Cultural Representation
Meeting the Housewives’ Dance Group at the Indonesian Community
Event
Literature on Authenticity in the Cultural Performance
of Dance
Unity in Diversity: An Inauthentic ‘Created' Indonesian
National Dance
Gaining Status through Photos with the Premier of Western
Australia
Conclusion

Chapter Two: From Embarrassing
to Empowering Performance, Femininity Negotiated in a Duel
for Recognition
The Indonesian Bazaar
Losing Face (Malu) with an ‘Amateur’ Performance
The State as Status
Markers of Status through Valued Criteria of Performance
Conclusion

Chapter Five: Ritual or Modern
Spectacle? How to Represent Exotic Bali to Potential Tourists
Ramayana as National Ritual Celebrating Indonesian Independence
Day
Ramayana as Ritual Out of Place in Australian Multicultural
Festival
The Three Dancers' Individual Narratives in Creating the
Modern Ramayana
Conclusion

Conclusion: Moving Together, Audience
Participation and Reception at the End of the Show
Revelations in the Disjunctures as told through Ethnographic
Stories
Discourses of Femininity, Relation to ‘Authenticity’ and
Audience Expectations
Locating the Findings in the Broader Literature

Monika Winarnita’s work provides an intellectually
rigorous, insightful, original and engaging examination of
the pursuit of ‘traditional, authentic’ Indonesian dance performances
by Indonesian immigrant women in Perth, Western Australia.
The author is to be congratulated for extracting layers of
nuance from a topic that for many may not even have drawn
a second look. She reminds us all that all human interactions
are fraught with deep, shifting meanings.
Professor Henry Spiller (ethnomusicology) and Chair, Department of Music,
UC Davis

This book is a very enjoyable read and makes a very
good contribution to knowledge in the field of anthropology
of migration in which it sits. The book invigorates key debates
in the anthropology of migration – with important insights
drawn from Indonesian studies, anthropology and studies of
performance.
Deirdre McKay, Social Geography and Environmental Politics, Keele
University
https://www.keele.ac.uk/gge/people/deirdremckay/

Winarnita uses the case study of an amateur Indonesian dance troupe, all women married to men in Perth, Australia to analyze the complex ways these women have grappled with redefining the feminine and reclaiming status in the diasporic context. She covers politics and poetics of authenticity in cultural representation; from embarrassing to empowering performance, femininity negotiated in a duel for recognition; aging dancers, diminished sexuality, and masculine performance; performing Chinese-Indonesian belonging in the diaspora, transnationally and translocally; and ritual or modern spectacle: how to represent exotic Bali to potential tourists. Protoview.com

Series Editor’s Preface
by Mina Roces
The Sussex Library of Asian Studies Series publishes
original scholarly work in various disciplines (including
interdisciplinary and transnational approaches) under the
rubric of Asian studies – particularly Economics, Education,
Religion, History, Politics, Gender, Comparative Studies with
the West, and Regional Studies in Asia. The Series is keen
to publish in emerging topics that demand attention in the
Asian context – from the politics of dress to the heteronormative
in India and Indonesia for example. Seminal works and approaches
will find a home here. The Series also welcomes single-country
studies or anthologies that explore one important theme across
a number of Asian contexts. We expect the Series to contribute
to the scholarly debates on topical issues, highlighting the
importance of the region.
... In Dancing the Feminine: Performances by Indonesian Migrant
Women, Monika Swasti Winarita uses
the case study of an amateur Indonesian dance troupe all
composed of Indonesian marriage migrants (all married to
Austalian men) in Perth, Australia to analzye the complex
ways these women have grappled with redefining the feminine
and reclaiming status in the diasporic context. Winarita
cleverly analyses how the dance troupe of mostly housewives
grappled with criticisms of authenticity, shame, and gender
constructs in the journey towards performing Indonesian-fusion
folk dances in the Australian contemporary context. The
dance troupe is extremely savvy in re-choreographing dance
moves and styles in response to the critique of the Indonesian Consulate and Australian audiences. As the dances are constantly
revised, the book tackles important concepts from the authenticity
of regional and ethnic dances, the political way marginal
groups such as the Balinese and the Indonesian-Chinese
are included, and the way femininity is imagined, reaffirmed
and reproduced in a transnational context. For example,
the author illustrates how older women dancers have been
relegated to performing male roles in order to be accepted
and appreciated as performers, and the ways in which the
migrant women are still subject to the official gender
ideals of the homeland through the influence of the Indonesian
Consulate. The result is a fascinating analysis of how
a group of Indonesian women have sought to empower themselves through cultural performance.

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